International adoption creates involuntary immigrants. Unlike the millions of others who cross borders during their lives, our migration is completely involuntary. It's not a choice we, nor our families, make. Instead, it's the adoption industry that dictates who stays in the countries we are born in and who is sent overseas. This blog chronicles how these two aspects of our lives intersect.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Some adoptees assert that intercountry adoption is the
largest migration of unwilling immigrants since the transatlantic slave trade.
In fact, that premise gave me the idea for this blog.

The numbers are comparable:
About 500,000 Africans were
brought to the U.S.* (and the colonies that would become the US). If we
accept that this website
is correct, from 1970 to 1999, then 265,677 people were brought to the US for
adoption. Then, to bring the numbers to include the boom years of 1999 to 2011
another 233,934 must be added, for a total of 499, 611.
Now, if 1999 is included twice since we’re combining sources here, then we have
to subtract 15,719 (all of these figures are from the State Department)
we’re down to 483,892. But, of course, intercountry adoption in its current
form started in 1954, which these numbers don’t capture. Additionally, some of
these adoptions were not intercountry adoptions in the sense that most think
of; they were relative adoptions. So, if we take out the relative adoptions,
but add in the adoptions before 1970, I estimate we would still be in the same
ballpark as 500,000.

Now, of course the numbers of
Africans who were brought to the US does not include the great number of humans
who were captured but died on their way to the western hemisphere. It also
should be noted, too, that the transatlantic slave trade to the US existed from
1675 to 1866, about 200 years. Intercountry adoption in its current form has been
around for just about 55 years.

I’m not arguing that the experience
of Black slavery is comparable to what intercountry adoptees experience. I'm just pointing out that the
two groups are similar in two ways: we are unwilling immigrants (forced
migrants) and we have similar numbers, currently. Adoptees will mostly likely soon surpass the number African slaves who were brought to the US. Interestingly, the source of the post-500,000 will also come from Africa, at least in part.

Will adoptees also impact the
demographics of the US in the same way that Black slavery has?